Thinking Inside the Box

BOX CANYON, Florence Junction, Az Today was our first trip as a group to Box Canyon. Since its still December its still pretty close to freezing for us Phoenix folks, even though its in the 60s during the day. With us today we had Myself (Kathleen) and Nick, and the boys Cameron and Connor; Billy and Denise and their two boys Dillon and Justin; their friends Jim and his wife; My parents John and Charlotte and of course Paula and Randy (Randy who WOULD NOT be left behind even though he had just had surgery on his foot!) To the left is a group picture of everyone that went. But back to the beginning... Everyone bundled up, most everyone besides my dad had the tops off of their jeep. First stop was the Gas Station in Gold Canyon to fill up and for snacks. Then is was on down hwy 60, past Florence Junction 3.5 mi and off to a well traveled road to the right. We stopped to air down at this point. Above is my dad working hard. The kids ran and played of course and here they are to the right. Paula is above getting a refill. Off we went..............................

Here is everyone making their way into the canyon. We eventually stopped for lunch before heading into the tight part of the canyon. See below for pictures of people stuffing their faces.

Above is Jims blue Jeep and Randy... Dont you know you have to go behind a bush to do that? My mom and dadeating and Paula taking it easy. After eating and the kids have stopped yelling "we are starving!" we headed into the narrow part of the canyon. It didnt start getting narrow for a litte while and it was pretty easy going. Below is pictures of us heading in.

And some more pictures of us driving are below. Not many challenges so far and we were all starting to think the rumors about box canyon were all fake. The scenery was beautiful and of course I could not stop taking pictures... (514 to be exact) wow, looks like someone loast a tire!

Then came the "waterfall" which it might have technically been in the spring with water, but it was just dry. The rocks on it were intimidating enough. As all of us stood and tried to decide
the best and SAFEST way down, Jim decides he will do neither and have fun doing it also. Below are some pictures of his jeep taking the tough road. The start was good but he got his

front end hung up on a rock and couldn't go forward or backwards. With the help of Billy and Nick the "rockmovers" we successfully got his jeep out of the bind so he could go back up and down again. The above pictures are before he hit bottom.............................................................

The rock movers to the rescue... Nick and Billy sure are strong but moved the rocks just right so he could get enough grip to get through.

From left to right: The boys safely hiding on the hill away from crazy jeeps. The women taking pictures of men in crazy jeeps and the rock moving contest. And my dad and Paula watching the fun. Then came billy as seen below. Then my dad and then Nick. We all watched from below and took pictures.

After the fun was over, everything else was anticlimatic, well almost. This was the major challenge but their was still more to come.

Randy took this like it was nothing.... Childs play he said... we all cant be awesome at this....
We are all watching a stock jeep head up the waterfall, amazingly he made it.

We hit water after this, there must have been a spring nearbye as this continued for a little while.
Randys foot started to swell so we made an ice bag for him. Connor and Dillon were having fun here in the back of Nicks jeep.

Always the hard way...

To be cont... I am tired from a long day of jeeping. :)

Cottonwood Canyon, Az

As you take the 60 freeway East out of Phoenix, you pass through Apache Junction and then Gold Canyon. Continuing on you come to florence Junction. Taking the 79 south, if you keep an eye out for mile marker 144 and 145, between those is Cottonwood Canyon road. We saw this on my moms topographic map and the area around there is Mineral Mountain area. Randy has been back in there I guess a few times, and reportedly got lost trying to get to the coke ovens, which we haven't been to yet. Nick has gone with randy though box canyon on one of his first adventures out in his jeep and he was worried my dad might have a tough time if he went. We stuck to Cottonwood Canyon and when the road forked we headed right and went down into a wash which turned out to be a dead end. Backtracking we headed back to the left fork and found a great road with a great camping spot for future use that we could haul in the trailers to and then go explore from there. Just Tweety and Red went on this trip as Randy can't quit his day job to jeep with us all the time. :) We stopped here for lunch of Turkey Sandwhiches and noticed all around the scattered empty shells and broken clay pidgeons left to lay where they fell. Its pretty sad that people have to leave their trash like that to spoil the beauty for others. GOOD news is that my parents can work off their criminal conviction by picking up trash if they can get BLM to let them do this. After eating, we continued down into a wash and followed it not too far until it went up a hill and connected with what we thought was one of the major mine roads in the area. After turning a few corners we came upon lots of old mines scattered on the hillsides. Most of them just ditches dug to find veins and lots of discarded rocks lying everywhere that were beautiful. Lots of bright green and turquois colors everywhere mixed with red and black and white quartz. To the left is just a small rock with what was lying everywhere. So we grabbed a bunch and loaded the back of the jeep and took them home to put in one of our flower beds outback by the pool. After walking around for about an hour, I could have stayed longer it was so interesting... we left and turned a different way going the opposite way we did when we came into the mine area, more towards the south. We passed a huge dump truck that was obviously out of commission on the side of the road. A few turns later we came to a gate that said private property but to the right of it there was this really cool mine. We went back as far as we could see with the outside light but no further. We'll come back with some flashlights and go in deeper. From there we turned around and backtracked our way out. Kids were due home form school in 2 hours so we didnt want to be late. Nick and I drove a little fast as my mom decided to drive making us slightly fear for the back of the jeep. So we kept well ahead to the main road returning home. I cant wait to go back to this place and camp and do some exploring. There are days worth of it in this area.

Bulldog Canyon, Az

Bulldog Canyon is west of Canyon lake. To get there you have to have BLM access codes to open the gate. This leads to a really cool place to go and hike back into. We have been twice so far, all the way back. It took us most of the day to do it, as we stopped along the way for breaks and to explore the area. You see here the back of Silver Snake, Tweety and Red Devil. On this trip my husbands friend was there with his 97 green Jeep wrangler. Going in we took a wrong turn and ended up at a dead end which is where we ate lunch. All the kids ran up the hill and did some hiking around while eating their sandwhiches. The weather was great! In mid to low 70s, sunny. Some of us were comfortable in s/s. Thank you Arizona! After lunch we turned around and found the right trail. It looked like the recent rains had washed it out and thats why it was hard to find as it looked different than our previous trip in. Most of it was wash driving on soft sand with some areas of hard rock and It took us a good hour to hour and a half to get all the way back in to where the canyon boxes up really good and its impassable by all sane drivers who value their vehicles. A couple steep hills on the way in that made me slightly fear for my life. One was a downward hard rock like waterfall that was a lot worse going back up than it was going down. We all made it safely to the bottom and contuned on. We finally made it to the end and everyone relaxed. Most everyone headed into the canyon to explore. Some cool finds there were a cave that bats had been living in halfway down the canyon, Randy found some Geodes and I found a big cracked geode on the way back. We always keep an eye out for cool and unusal rocks to add to Randy's rock garden, and now mine. This ultimately turned out to be a great day and everyone returned home aorund 330 tired and relaxed.